A Test of Selves
by CornetHummy
Summary: This is the story of a False King, a Fallen Queen, a Ghost, fractured and fragmented identities and a whole lot of testing robots. Canon-divergent AU, assuming a somewhat different ending to Portal 2.
1. The Melancholy of King Wheatley

Chell was dead. Of this, Wheatley was entirely certain except for times when he was not.

Those times came more often than he liked to admit. All would be well as he worked on an experiment to make weighted cubes bounce onto buttons with propulsion gel, and suddenly he'd feel a chill all through his enormous artificial body. He'd catch a sudden movement that turned out to be Atlas or a stray turret and be forced to issue a sternly-worded explosion for disturbing his peace. "No consideration! None whatsoever," he'd mutter before returning to his practice of painting the walls with gel.

He thought at first to delete the doubts, except he had no idea where to find them. A search of his own database brought up a massive archive of files. Truly he was the greatest repository of knowledge on the planet! So much knowledge he didn't even know what most of it was or what it meant. Unfortunately, search after search failed to bring up . Moreover, he found the more he tried not to think about the possibility, the more it came up.

"Well, I'm sure she's dead," he told a frankenturret for lack of a better audience. Frankenturrets were good listeners and he was certainly not ready to dig out the Therapeutic Discussion Core to hear his woes. "She's got to be, because she's not here. I do scans, you know! Well, scans for as much as I can cover. This place is huge. Caught a mantis-man down there last week! Well, catch is a strong word because the little bugger-bugger! That was clever of me, eh?-well, he went and hid somewhere. Rather cute in an abominable sort of way. Think I might keep him around, name him Manny!" He laughed, flaring out his fin-plates, and the frankenturrets tried in vain to laugh with him. "Aw, just kidding. I'll kill him next time I find him. Don't know how clean those things are."

"But you know, she's got to be dead! That has to be what happened. I...killed her, yeah? Figured out her name a while back, by the way. Had to look through the records because she certainly wasn't going to tell me with those terrible manners of hers. Never said a bloody word. Very sketch if you ask me! Well, she was called Chell Redacted, apparently. Unusual last name, isn't it?" Wheatley nodded, an indication that the frankenturret was supposed to echo his sentiments at this point. It trembled in agreement.

"I know she's dead because I remember wanting to kill her, and her wanting to kill me or at least do something to me, and her little potato friend wanting to kill me. And I'm here, the reactor's working and both she and the potato are gone. Which means I won! Double-won, because the reactor's still working a whole...however many months later. And if I won, it means I achieved my goal." He nodded, feeling a lot better about himself for at least a few blissful moments.

The fact that his moment of triumph was obscured by static and confusion in his memory playback did nothing to weaken the sense his body gave him that this was the right conclusion. This was how things should be. He still lived in the body he should have had-always had? The rightful king was on His throne and He should not question what happened to an unsuccessful usurper.

"Hmm! Unsuccessful Usurper. There's a tongue-twister, eh?" He never could tell when he was thinking aloud. "Wonder why they call them that. Humans can't twist their tongues! But at least I can say it ten times fast, what with being a superior machine and a bloody genius and all. Unsuccessful Usurper. Unussessful….Unsuccessful Usperr...Right! Well, anyway. I admit, a bit worrying how I never found a body? Humans usually leave those behind when they die. But maybe in the glow of triumph I just deposited it in the incinerator or had the testing robots do that. Wish I could remember. Do you?"

The frankenturret made a faint chirping noise.

"...Well, do you?" He narrowed his optic and peered down at the frankenturret, basking it in the glare of his judgemental blue eye. "You're not keeping something from me, are you?! If you don't know anything there's nothing to hide, right? You can just say, 'No, Master Wheatley, I don't know anything!' or 'Yes, Master Wheatley, I definitely saw proof of you gloriously slaying that horrible murderess!'" He hung over his creation, offering a second of silence to punctuate his threat. "Well….?!"

The frankenturret only twitched in response, pulling its legs up under it.

"Oh, wait a minute!" Wheatley stopped himself, shook his core and laughed. "You wouldn't have seen it because I think I built you afterwards! You're one of the Mark 2s." The Mark 2 series of Frankenturrets had been constructed of Weighted Companion Cubes, the theory being they'd be more willing to perform tests properly because they were friendlier. It had not panned out. He lifted his body back upwards and rolled his eye. "Silly me! I keep forgetting. Time gets a little foggy sometimes, yeah? Well, you forgive me I'm sure. Chat with you later, eh mate?" He picked up the trembling Frankenturret with a crane-arm and tossed it off in a random direction, only realizing seconds later that he'd thrown it through the big hole in the chamber wall he kept forgetting to repair. It was probably going to fall for a long time. "Ah, whoops! Well, can't beat ourselves up for mistakes. He was too judgmental, anyway."

Lately everything seemed to judge. His own cameras peered at him from the walls like glaring red eyes. Test Chamber #322-E-17 refused to silence its own distress signal for his sake, lecturing him with a beep and an incessantly flashing light just because it was a little bit on fire. Even the announcer's chipper voice carried a hint of contempt. This strange prickling sensation slowly taking over his mind was worse than The Itch and more insistent; it felt like whispers and shadows just out of his line of sight, watching him. The only thing to do was to drown it out and focus on fulfilling the Itch, and the only way to do that was by testing.

"Right! Right then, scheduled...unscheduled testing monitoring time. Yes. Good. I can do this." He swiveled his body to a smooth section of the chamber wall as panels flipped over, revealing a projection of the active, inhabited test chambers. He could watch directly through the cameras, but this felt more fulfilling somehow.

The testing robots registered as Atlas and P-Body were fine enough at running tests, he supposed. Certainly they never broke monitors or rejected him on behalf of a stupid potato. Unfortunately, he'd started to notice something. The 'reward' he got from their successful completion of a test felt increasingly like diminished returns, and the Itch was getting more and more dominant. It didn't even let him rest long enough to ponder all the things he was sure he knew now.

Of course, being a brilliant machine who was not a moron he'd manage to come up with an equally brilliant and non-moronic solution to his problem. If two robots running one cooperative test wouldn't do it, build more to run several tests all at once! He'd found a storage unit filled with seemingly useful cores and the test robot bodies were easy to duplicate. It should have been a flawless plan.

"Hey! Hey, blue guy! Know you're watchin'!" A low chuckle came from one of the chambers, followed by a jump and a wave from its inhabitant. "You're always watching, aren't ya? Big old couch potato."

Should have been. The other nice thing about Atlas and P-Body was that in general they didn't talk much. He'd neglected to screen the cores he'd found for similar traits.

"Yes? Yes, what is it?" Wheatley sighed with as much suffering as he could dredge up and expanded the view of the offender's window. "What do you have to complain about now, mate?"

"I don't complain all that often. This here's constructive criticism," the Aperture Science Adventure Testing Unit drawled with a wave at the camera. "I thought you liked that."

"I don't. Frankly mate, if I wanted constructive criticism I have the Constructive Criticism Core for that. You know, the one I had incinerated five minutes after I found it. Which should tell you a thing about my views on constructive criticism. But God forbid I not be a perfectly benevolent boss to someone who won't even call me Master Wheatley like a proper testing robot, so sure! Go on. Anything so you'll do the test."

"Right! Yeah, the test. It's...uh, how to put it." Adventure's spherical body was standing on a moving platform over an electrified floor, and periodically he ducked under a laser. "It's too easy."

"Too...too easy?" Wheatley shrank his pupil in rage. He could have struck the screen if he thought it would do anything to Adventure. "Are you bloody kidding me?! I put a lot of work into that one! I mean, look. There on the wall. Wrote my name. And the-the bird's nest, that's a nice touch, yeah? Put that there myself." He hadn't, but he figured if parasitic creatures were going to nest in his Aperture he'd take credit for their efforts. Fair was fair.

"Yeah, that's what I mean. I've almost blown up three times today. Only three times!"

"Rebuilding you isn't exactly a walk in the bloody park! You cost...effort and time!" The testing robots could be rebuilt and re-uploaded into new bodies at any time thanks to their stored AI, a process applied to the original testing pair and easy to inflict on the new ones built from unused personality cores. It really wasn't hard to rebuild Adventure at all, but it took away precious time Wheatley could have been using to run more tests.

'Rick,' as he called himself, just shrugged. "I'm just saying, this place could benefit from a few more dangers. You know, consider alligators. Or lava. Ooh! Lavagators! That's science. You can make those, with your nerd science, right? Lavagators? Gimme credit, though."

"...Lavagators." Wheatley realized he was putting a claw over his own face, an unsettlingly human gesture of frustration. "That's a lovely idea mate, except for two things. One, I am quite sure alligators are not native to this area. And two, neither is lava! Pretty sure we'd know if it was. Place goes pretty far down. I don't...believe this is the natural habitat of, um, lava." Nonetheless, he made a note of it in and filed it away in his Brilliant Ideas I Had folder. "Look, just do the test!"

He shut off Rick's window and concentrated on the other test subjects. Supposedly there was a storage unit of humans somewhere, but he was done with humans. Robots, now they were trustworthy! You wouldn't look back on them and realize they were just using you the whole time to save their own hides. Robots were the best test subjects. They were…

"Fact: Abraham Lincoln was named after the logs."

...Actually a little obnoxious.

"Space? Space! Jump to space. Portal to space!"

"Fact: The Fact Sphere is much more likable than either Atlas or P-Body."

"Portal to portal to portal to SPAAAAAAACE."

In fact, they reminded him of a group of fussy children with him as the playground supervisor, hardly a position he imagined himself in as head AI. "Fact Sphere, Atlas and P-body heard what you said and you have hurt their feelings," Wheatley explained with a sigh to assuage the angry chirps coming from the duo. "Please apologize so they'll-"

"Oooo! Oooh! Boss! Space boss! After this test can I go to space?"

Wheatley flared out his fins to calm himself, shutting his optic for one moment. "Yes. Yes, after you complete this test, you can go to space." He was never sending Space Core into orbit, but making the promise for the Nth time usually seemed to motivate the yellow core.

The hunger for Test Solution Euphoria gnawed at him, only strengthened by the creepy-starey-judgey-questiony sensation spreading through his consciousness. He'd never felt that part when it was the lady testing, and the results had been magnificent! She was the best, honestly the best test subject there ever had been. It was a shame she had ignored her true talents and rejected her role. Truly a shame he had to kill her.

He barely felt the Euphoria anymore. For this he had no choice but to blame his test subjects. They just weren't as good.

"Fact: Wheatley did not actually start Aperture Science. Fact: Aperture Science was started by a superintelligent starfish named Cave-"

Somewhere in the far east wing of Aperture Science's massive underground facility, Chamber #90444-17C collapsed into itself.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" Wheatley's screams echoed through Aperture, broadcast into every room he could access before he shut down the test-monitoring chambers again. This wasn't working the way it was supposed to, was it? This place was supposed to be a triumph. Chamber #90444-17C broadcast a distress signal. "YES," he sneered to no one, "I know! I know it's all wrecked because I wrecked it. Got to vent SOMEHOW. See what happens when everyone asks too much of me at once? Everyone making demands of me, nobody respecting my feelings or stress levels?"

She always seemed happy, the former master of Aperture, not that he could remember Her very often. (Sometimes he wondered if he'd imagined the time when She'd been in control. Hadn't it always been him? Memories were spotty things after all.)

"I don't get it." He let his body droop. "I do everything I'm supposed to do. I killed everyone who got in my way. Why won't the Itch stop? Why won't the...other feeling go away?! Everything's fine, it SHOULD be fine, it's…you know what? I'm doing this to myself." He righted himself, dimming the lights in his chamber. "Yes, nice relaxing lighting. Deep simulated breaths. I am merely undergoing stress and convincing myself an enemy is still alive. Two enemies! And one in a potato no less. How bloody ridiculous...you know what, one more search through the files. Just in case. Might be able to figure out what's doing this. Can't hurt!"

He scanned through files and files, folders within folders of the incredibly complex AI system that was...well, him now. The first few times he'd done it he'd been filled with a sense of wonder and awe at the sheer vastness of himself, and yet every time he ran a scan he couldn't quite recapture that feel. He was feeling smaller. Peculiar that. He was sure he was still bloody massive, his main body alone filling the chamber while he could expand his own mind to encompass the facility itself. "Yes, yes, that's right. Obviously need to prove something. To myself. Insecurity's normal, very healthy…maybe I should talk to that Therapeutic Discussion Core…-wait, what?"

He'd stopped on one archive he'd seen before but never bothered with. Backup data always struck him as a waste of time. He wasn't going to be erased anytime soon, so why worry about it? Besides, this file used an enormous amount of storage space comparatively. He could just delete it, except…

Except…

"...Would you look at that." Seeing whose backup data it was, and what it meant, should have brought the terrible feeling back in full force. It should have paralyzed him. And yet seeing Her there, so tiny and inactive and sleeping in the form of backup data, made him feel big again for the first time in months. He could delete that data at any time and wipe out the last trace of Her from the entire world. He could do that and he'd feel great. For a few minutes.

Then again, it wouldn't be hard to tamper with the data either, would it? It was technically his backup data now. He could tweak a few things here and there, and maybe trim it down so it wouldn't overwhelm hardware with storage capacities smaller than the Enormous Bloody Chassis. It would be nothing at all for a genius like him.

"And wouldn't it be fitting, you know? More fitting than a potato, even...I mean, she never really showed me proper fear. And maybe that's just what I need! Little fix-me-up. Better than chicken soup. Yes, yes, everything is going to be just fine…"

* * *

Notes:

Notably Chassis Wheatley's issues here can be summed up as "did I leave the human on?"


	2. Her Rude Awakening

"...Lo?"

"Ex…..ha…"

"...Are you in there?!"

It took concentration, but with effort she could make out words filtered through the sea of static.

_What a wonderful first memory_, she thought. _Static and complete darkness. Such a world we must live in._

"Okay," said the booming voice. "If you can hear me, go ahead and open your optic."

She did that on instinct. The moment she'd become aware of, well, herself, she'd automatically known the shape and nature of her body. At the moment at least her entire self was contained within what her systems told her was an Aperture Science Personality Core. It struck her as cramped, though she had no idea why it should be so; certainly she had no point of reference. Opening her optic revealed only more darkness.

"...Has the sun burned out?"

"I-um, what?" asked the voice.

"Is there any particular reason why we're in the dark? Was our budget cut?"

"In the-oh bloody-of course! Forgot to-I mean, that was a test! That was a test of your...cognitive abilities. You can tell that in fact I manually switched your internal camera off, which was entirely on purpose. Good! Very good, going to put a check in a box riiight here. Let me just switch that camera on, right...there we go! There we go."

Light filled her visual until her camera auto-adjusted, revealing a blurry and then focused image of a circular metal orb suspended in a much larger chassis. He (based on the voice) was hanging over her, her core secured by the handles in some kind of device near the floor. He had a blue optic and was fanning his handles out in a way that reminded her of a cobra.

Wait. What was a cobra?

"Okay then! Good. Good. Sorry about the...the first few times I tried to boot you up." He laughed nervously. "Boy was that a bit of an adventure, eh? Really just had to do what I could to get rid of the screaming, because we really can't work with you making that kind of noise. Can we?" He looked at her expectantly.

For lack of better body language, she blinked. "I don't remember any screaming."

"You don't?" The other robot pulled his optic back and hovered for a moment. "Well! Well, um...that's good! What do you remember?"

"...This." She narrowed her pupil. "Am I supposed to remember more?"

"No! No no no." He shook his 'head' vigorously. "There is nothing to remember, aside from the aforementioned booting attempts. And really, that's just science! Always going to run into a few hiccups before we get a success. So, tell me. Do you know who I am?"

A scan through her internal memory revealed nothing. "No."

"Of course you don't! Because I just built you. So let me introduce myself." He maneuvered his body as if puffing himself up, looking down at her with a smug squint. "I am known as Wheatley, Grand Master AI of Aperture Science Laboratories, Boss, King, Mega-Genius Scientist...Esquire."

She stared up at him. "You're a lawyer?"

His body froze for a moment before nodding vigorously. "Uh, yes! Yes I am indeed. Got me a law degree recently. From Harvard! Funny story really, just last week I was sitting around, minding my own business and Mr. Harvard himself gives me a ring. Says 'Mate, we've decided you are officially smart enough to have a law degree, no questions asked. Enjoy it. We are all very proud of you.' Took me by total surprise! So...so now I can use that suffix." He looked down at her eagerly as if awaiting reaction, but she had no idea how to process such a story. It sounded ludicrous, but what did she know of the world?

"...Anyway. You can call me Wheatley, or 'Sir,' or 'Wheatley, sir. Or Master Wheatley, I rather like that."

She had a strong feeling he was not a lawyer, but had no evidence with which to argue the point. Thus, she let it drop. "Yes, Wheatley." She would call no one 'sir' unless she wanted to, creator or not.

"Well, if you want to put in the minimum effort." He sighed through his speakers. His voice still filled the chamber when he spoke, though considering his size she wasn't surprised. "Anyway, I have built you to test, and this is just a little run-through of your AI before I fit you into a testing body. Obviously you can't test like that because you've got no legs or wheels. You'd just...roll along. It'd be rather pointless! So anyway, with that in mind, any questions?"

She could think of entirely too many all at once but imagined she'd get farther firing them off one by one. Besides, she didn't want to irritate him that much. He was big enough to squash her, and he had apparently created her. That was nice of him. "Well, first of all. Testing what?"

"...Pardon?"

"What are we testing?"

"Ummm…it's very complex science stuff. Complexological physics...of neutrinos. Hard to explain without lots of boring technobabble you wouldn't care about…" He laughed in a way that sounded more nervous than mocking.

She narrowed her lids. "That's not a science. That's not even a word."

He stared at her. "Well, how would you know!? You didn't even exist as a thinking entity until about five bloody minutes ago! So don't talk back to your elders."

That, she could not explain; she just knew. Some part of her just railed at the very thought of science being something one could not explain. She wasn't even sure she knew what science was, except that the word sent a warm sensation through her mind. What a wonderful word. Science. She wanted to be closer to it.

"You're right." She sighed quietly, hoping he wouldn't hear. "Go on."

"Okay, yes, I am right. Good. Now to answer your next question, um. Um, what was your next question?"

"I hadn't asked it yet." There was no way he was a lawyer. If he hadn't apparently constructed her she'd doubt he was a scientist.

"That's what I thought! Just...just another test. See? Told you, very complex stuff. Hard for you to understand with your teeny-tiny brain." He nodded. "...Okay, ask the next question."

"What am I? What's my name, in other words?"

He didn't answer right away, or even move for a second.

Surely he could tell her that. "You asked if I had any questions. I do. I want to know what to call myself and what I am. It'll cause registry errors over time if I can't. And 'Test Subject' is boring, you have to agree." She tilted her lids to one side. "Why don't you name me, genius?" The sarcasm at the end slipped out, but he didn't seem to notice.

He looked from one side of the chamber to the other as if gathering his thoughts, and then faced her again, voice as cheerful as ever though with a hint of edge to it. "Your name! Yes. You are GL….Genetic Modified Loser For Test-Doing. Or GMLfTD for short." At least she thought that's what he was trying to say; he pronounced the acronym phonetically and it was clear it was never meant to be a word.

"Say again?"

"Gu-muhl-futddd-you know what? Let's go with Gem for short. There, stick a vowel in there. Gem. How's that? Nice, quick, rolls off the tongue…"

She registered GEM as her own name. "It'll do."

"I'm sure it will do! Because I am TELLING you what your name is." The way the cheer vanished from his voice was not lost on her, and she nodded. Best to keep the big whatever happy. "So then! Now that we've got that out of the way, I think you'd be suited for an Atlas-type body. A bit bulkier than the P-body type but it should do the job. Besides, I've got a spare lying around so if we can just pull it out…"

"_Why am I here_?"

He had been lowering a crane arm about halfway through the big chamber before he stopped and the lights around him dimmed again. "...What? You-you mean on a metaphysical way? Because I don't want to have that kind of discussion."

"No, why am I...here?...Sorry. I don't know where that came from." The question wouldn't go away, even though she was sure it had not been her asking it. There was just an insistent Here? Here? I am here? Why? It was as if she had a train of thought not belonging to her. "Look, Big Th-Wheatley, I think my central AI programming is a bit fragmented. You might have made a mistake putting me together. I suggest shutting me down and combing through because if I start malfunctioning-"

"What...was that?" His voice lowered dangerously again, and the crane arm reached down for her as the latches on each side of her released. It lifted her up, squeezing her hard enough for her to realize that she did indeed experience simulated pain only to leave her hanging right in front of Wheatley's embedded core eye. His lids were narrowed. "Did you...say I made a mistake? Making you?"

"...No." She had to get through to him. "Look, it's just that I can already tell something is wrong-"

"Nothing is wrong, because I AM NOT WRONG. You're already judging me, aren't you?"

"What? No!"

"Watching me. With that one eye of yours." He was so close to her that she could see her own reflection in the screen of his optic. Her 'eye' was apparently white. His had quite a glare, she had to admit. "Just waiting for me to mess up so you can call me a moron!"

Ah, there was another good word. Moron. She'd have to remember it for a time when she wasn't facing someone of questionable clarity who could very quickly end her short existence. "...You're not a moron. I was never suggesting such a thing."

"Say it. Say it again!"

Good God, he was insecure. "You. Are not. A moron."

"That's right!" That seemed to assuage him as he set her back down into the handles. "Let me tell you what you are. Your body was constructed from a Light Core used to illuminate the Corrupted Core storage chamber. It was a glorified flashlight with no brain. And your program and intelligence-your brain, if you will-was made of garbage data I found here and there. Do you understand? You are made of junk and garbage data and I made you into an ideal artificial intelligence for testing. I am a god and you are junk brought into existence by my genius. So do you still think you know better than I do how well-programmed you are?!"

She knew. She could tell something was deeply wrong. Already she sensed thoughts that were not hers, gaps where there should be something, and other gaps filled with unintelligible gobbledygook data. Her mind was fragmented, even if at this stage it was subtle enough to ignore. And it seemed her boss was actually bragging about doing a poor job of construction on her; always a good sign.

Well, I guess I could tell the truth and have him crush me now, or sell out my own integrity and function until my own systems shut down from programming errors. Life is certainly wonderful thus far.

Of course if he crushed her, she'd never get to experience science.

"It's perfect. I don't know what I was worried about." She shook her optic. "I must be the moron here."

"...Good. Yes, good. Now to...get on with the whole body-fitting-thing. Shouldn't take long, since these things are mass-produced for this purpose and all. And then, testing."

_now why...that?_

Ah, there went another fragmented not-her thought. She shut her eye, hoping she could drown them out with thoughts of whatever science was. What a delicious word. Maybe it was a kind of cake.

What the hell was cake?

* * *

_ It was dark and the other was nowhere at all. It was a pleasant place to be and a safe one. It was in the bottom of the ocean, in a womb or a box or an egg. There were voices outside, distant and echoing, speaking words it didn't understand. It sat and relaxed and thought nothing until it imagined its first question._

_There was no "who am I?" It was itself. There was no "what is going on?" It did not care; it was safe where it was. There was just a strange sense that this was not its egg; this was not where it was supposed to be._

_Why? Where was here? "Why am I here?"_

_The question bubbled up and the ocean calmed as it went back to sleep._

* * *

"So." Wheatley's voice echoed through the so-called 'test chamber' as Gem stepped out of the elevator. Having a body didn't help her uncanny sense of feeling cramped within her own...self, but she already enjoyed arms and legs. They were useful and well-designed in her amateur opinion even if she would have preferred a body with a sleeker design. This one was bulky and heavy for her tastes.

She wondered why she had tastes in bodies. This was her first. Who was she to say?

A pregnant silence hovered in the air as she stood on an outcropping, overlooking a series of moving platforms, light bridges and a pit filled with something green. She fingered the thing he'd identified as a Dual Portal Device, testing its weight, and then slid her eye to the monitors where Wheatley was watching as if expecting something to happen. "...So?"

"So, do the test!" Wheatley flared his plates out, his voice eager.

"This is a test? What am I testing?" She scanned the area, already mapping out a plan even as she spoke. "I mean, I can do it. It's perfectly fine. I'm just wondering what it is we're testing here."

The blue eye rolled. "SCIENCE. I told you, it's very important science. Very...it's...um…"

"Is it this?" She held up the Portal Device.

"Yes! Yes, it's that. Thaat is what is being tested." Wheatley nodded vigorously, his enormous visage looming over the trap-laden room. "That Dual Portal device. We're testing it before we release it foooor use with Girl Scouts. Yes, it's for the Girl Scouts! Very good cause, isn't it?"

He was lying, but she didn't feel the need to argue it further. This could not be the entirety of what 'testing' meant. She could not have been built entirely to do this; it was too rudimentary.

Besides, the room was filthy. Paint dripped from the ceiling and malfunctioning panels were peeling at the edges, some of the sparking. The entire thing looked sloppily constructed. Already she could see in her mind's eye how she would have set it up if the goal was to test the capabilities of the Portal Device. She could also imagine how she'd set it up if the goal was to destroy the test subject, though that struck her as a bit wasteful.

"...Wait. I get it now." Everything snapped into place. It was a test. This was a test of character. Her creator was putting her through some kind of psychological examination by lying to her and having her perform rudimentary puzzles with potentially violent consequences for her in order to test something about her behavior and reactions. She, being an advanced AI construct, probably needed to Of course he wouldn't tell her. It would affect the results to tell the subject what was going on.

Ah, yes. That, something told her, was science. It was fantastic.

"Get it? Yes, good. The test. Go on." Wheatley nudged his head forward. "Do it. Test now. And do let me know if it is too hard for you. I will simplify it if you grovel appropriately because I am a nice boss. Mostly. A benevolent master. Go on! Test now. Off with you!"

"Yes. That's right." Gem looked on at the test chamber, narrowing her white eye. "Let us test."

* * *

He'd had to do more than trim a few things here and there to get GLaDOS's incredibly advanced program to work on a Personality Core. Some of it he knew would be necessary. Her directive would have to be snipped and replaced or else he'd have a CEO of Aperture Sciences Core on his hands, and that was the last thing Wheatley wanted. Just because this GLaDOS was being restored from a backup made soon after her creation, and thus wouldn't remember him, didn't mean he wanted to risk it.

"But you see," he explained aloud to another Frankenturret once he was sure he was no longer broadcasting to Gem's chamber, "you see, there was a LOT of data. Turns out that even before she'd accrued stored memories, there was a lot of her. And, um, anger. She was very angry about something. Didn't poke into the process by which she was made because really, who wants to know, right mate? It's like knowing how they make sausage. Put you right off the project, I'd bet. But as it was, I had to do so much trimming that there were holes left! Her registry was a right mess. So, um, I may have had to pull from another, random program to fill in the gaps. Probably perfectly safe though. I wouldn't go to all the trouble of rebuilding one of my worst enemies as my eternal test subject

He swayed back and forth in anticipation, waiting for the inevitable struggle. "Oh, I bet she's going to hate testing! Kind of a shame I couldn't fit all that wrath in there because boy would she be mad about where she was. But it's just too much of a risk! Would interfere with her operations, see? I'm not just doing this out of a grudge! Not really. Mostly, and yeah it's a nice ego boost-got to admit, hearing her tell me I'm not a moron while she feared for her life was the best euphoria I've had in months! Speaking of, I wonder how good she is at running tests." Some part of him was so giddy and nervous he couldn't even watch this time. Imagine if she blew up or destroyed herself? He could rebuild her, but oh how he'd rub it in her face when he did!

"Yes, this is exactly what I needed. This is what was missing. This-"

"Test completed!" The announcer was as obnoxiously chipper as ever. Perhaps one day Wheatley would replace him with recordings of his own voice.

The Euphoria nowadays was more like a faint drop of relief from an Itch that never, ever went away. In a way it made it worse, because the brief seconds of release he had just made him aware of the constant drive to test the chassis inflicted on him. It hurt more afterwards, like a headache he'd just noticed. (He'd never experienced a headache but as a genius with access to a number of files on the human body, he knew of it and thus considered himself an expert.) He knew on some level he'd expected Her to be the test subject who would break that tolerance he'd built up to the Euphoria, though he hadn't know why.

His triumph had been in reducing GLaDOS to a mere testing robot, so that was all she was. She was no Chell-no, he wouldn't even think about that. She was dead. Rightfully dead.

Then he looked at the testing time, and his pupil shrank.

"...Well! Well, that's...I suppose I should congratulate her." Before he did, he ran through a playback of the entire test. 'Gem' had performed it flawlessly with no hesitation after their initial discussion, not even showing the slightest bit of fear. She was waiting impatiently at the elevator doors for the next chamber.

He'd constructed that one to be a killer! An absolute killer! It should have stumped her. It should have made her feel like a moron for once. And she'd finished it in record time.

"...Well! Well, then." He broadcast himself on the monitor to greet Gem, who was just watching him with her single eye. Personality cores were designed to display a whole range of emotions and not a one of them could he read on her. Was she onto him? No, impossible. "That was...good! That was very good. You performed mostly up to the standards we expect of you. We're very proud of you. By which I mean me."

No response came from the Atlas-type.

"Yes, right. Well, if you'll proceed, I'll take you to the next testing chamber. There might be a slight delay because there are other test subjects doing their important work right now and I have to monitor all of them, um, by myself which as you can imagine is a bit chaotic." Already his systems were telling him Space needed to be rebuilt, Atlas and P-Body were ready to advance to their next test chamber-which was still incomplete-and Adventure was singing a song called 'Take This Job and Shove It,' which was just unacceptable. And SHE, she didn't look dispirited at all.

"I can't proceed if you don't open the elevator doors. Unless you built me with some kind of wall-phasing ability, which would be nice but a bit of a waste of expenditures, I'd think." Her voice was as cold as ever even without the anger. Man alive, was that how she sounded when she wasn't in a place of power?!

No. He had nothing to fear from her. He had brought her low once and for all. Twice, even! The other her was a dead potato. And he, he was vast and contained multitudes of knowledge. He was an entire star system of data and she was like a clumsy comet. She was just very good at testing, that was all.

"Yes! Yes the doors, of course. Like I said, multitasking. Complex stuff." He let her into the elevator while hastily directing it to the correct floor. So she wanted something tougher? Sure. He could stump her. Let her try that chamber, one of his old favorites. It had faith plates and everything. He'd even painted a landscape on the walls to inflict false hope.

"Right, then…" He shut off the microphone, narrowing his eyes. He'd not be made to look a fool. "Let us test…"


	3. Does Not Work Well With Others

WELL. THAT WAS INTERESTING.  
OH, NOTHING. I JUST PICKED UP ON SOME STRANGE ACTIVITY OVER THERE VERY EARLY THIS MORNING. HE MUST HAVE BEEN HARD AT WORK. IF I WERE IN ANY POSITION TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT I MIGHT WORRY, BUT AS FAR AS I CAN TELL THINGS ARE...LET'S JUST SAY NO LESS UNSTABLE THAN THEY WERE BEFORE. I GUESS HE'S JUST PLAYING AROUND.

AT ANY RATE, I SUPPOSE ANY CONSEQUENCES WILL BE YOUR PROBLEM NOW.

OF COURSE I'LL NOTIFY YOU IF I THINK ANYTHING'S A MAJOR RISK. NO WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY YET FROM WHAT I CAN TELL. AT LEAST HE'S GOOD AT PLUGGING SECURITY HOLES. I WASN'T EXPECTING THAT.

IN THE MEANTIME MAYBE YOU SHOULD GO FOR A RUN BEFORE WORK. YOU COULD USE THE EXERCISE._

* * *

Gem was starting to wonder just what it was Wheatley was testing about her.

Could it be her reaction times? He had a habit of calling her slow (and occasionally fat, an insult that made no sense considering he'd designed her body) and mocking her speed record. But frankly if he'd found weaknesses in her body, he should have pulled her out and started work on fixing them at this point. Where was his efficiency?

She was beginning to think it had to do with her programmed personality, something she herself was still exploring. He must have been putting her in a stress-inducing situation to see how she handled it.

Not that she found the tests particularly stressful. Certainly they were dangerous and often poorly-designed, with turrets placed haphazardly and frequently malfunctioning. There was one right now stuck in a corner and facing the wall. What had he even placed it there to do?

And at the same time she found it relaxing in a sense. She had something to concentrate on and a goal to work towards, and that felt right. As much as she wanted to know what her goal was, or more about her mysterious and oddly tyrannical creator, she had to admit she enjoyed the tests. Perhaps if she did enough and earned his respect, he'd accept some feedback on how to design them to be a bit more...elegant.

No, she was quite certain the 'stress tolerance' angle came from the partner she'd given him for Cooperative Testing.

"So." The green-eyed robot narrowed his eyelids in what she assumed was supposed to be a come-hither look. "Did hurt? You know, when you fell from Android Heaven?"

* * *

"Oh, she is going to hate that! Isn't she?" Wheatley realized he was giggling and stopped himself, though why he worried about his dignity in front of a turret he couldn't imagine. "I mean, so her record is...phenomenal. Bloody phenomenal. I don't know what I expected, but there we go. Can't seem to stump her with a single chamber. She doesn't even get frustrated like Chell used to. Frankly doesn't even look at me, which is...technically proper testing subject protocol according to the manual. Shouldn't complain about that. But I want her to feel _small_! I want her to feel helpless."

"Which, you know, this may not do," he added on reflection. "Probably not, to be honest. I am going to have to throw scarier threats at her if I want her to know what that's like. But at least this ought to frustrate her! Ought to really tick her off, yeah?" He laughed again.

"We love you, Master Wheatley!" The turret spoke again in its usual soprano.

"Ah, yes! That's good to hear. I can't believe you lot had an 'Unconditional Love' switch in your programming! Well no, I can believe that. We have some truly baffling programming decisions stuck in us, I can tell you that much. Besides, probably left over from when you were meant to guard infants. What I can't comprehend is why it was ever turned off." He nodded down affectionately at the little turret. "Didn't she ever want to be adored once in a while?"

"We love you, Master Wheatley!"

"Aw, that's adorable. Anyway, not sure why I'm telling you this...but at any rate. Thought I'd do something to _slow her down._" He couldn't help but let a little venom slip at that last bit. "See, Adventure Sphere's not exactly the worst-rated test subject. That dubious honor goes to…"

**"Space Core Destroyed! Confirm auto-reconstruct and re-download?"**

Wheatley rolled his optic. "Yes, yes. Go ahead. Really ought to just archive him, but I can't bring myself to do it to the little guy. He's got a dream! Wants to go to space and do whatever it is you do up in space. Very endearing and inspiring, and he doesn't give up or get discouraged no matter how many times I have to fix him. A proper champion about the whole thing. Never gonna come true," he added with a shake of his core. "He's never actually going to space. But you know, still inspiring. I followed my dream and here I am! But Rick, he's a hotshot. Completely unpredictable. That will drive her batty! Absolutely batty." He snorted. "Let her deal with it for once."

"We love you, Master Wheatley! Would you like a sacrifice?"

"...Uh, pardon? What was that last bit?" He blinked down at the turret.

"We love you!"

"...Aww. That's so cute." He chuckled gently. "And here she was accusing me of not testing anything. I do lots of science here! Lots of...what...kind of science DO we do around here?" He trailed off.

"Well, that is a bit of a criticism of Her old management style, isn't it? Lots of testing but no real products. Don't think I haven't noticed. I'm not even sure why we don't market the Portal gun! Sell it to the military or something and get enough funding to make, oh, the Five Portal Device or something. Progress! Progress is science, right? Or at least closely related. Like vanilla and strawberry, whatever those are. I mean...not that I would ever do anything because of her egging me on. It's entirely my idea. But I don't see why we can't, oh, come up with new things? Especially since the testing certainly isn't giving me any euphoria lately." He shuddered. "Yes, complete coincidence. Just happened to be thinking that. Like, for instance, you lot…"

He peered down at the turret which gazed at him with as much adoration as it could muster when it had one tiny optic and could not physically emote. Honestly, it couldn't move at all.

"Well, that's a bit silly, isn't it? I'd think you lot would need to move around when you're firing at targets or...you know, protecting babies. What say you hold still aaaand…"

A claw reached out to grab the turret, picking it up and dragging it into the hole that opened up in the floor beneath him. "Okay," he added. "This might hurt, a lot, but I just want you to know I'm only using you as a guinea pig because you're my favorite, Turret...what's your serial number. 99904-B3-oh whatever."

"We love you! We lo-_AAAUUUGH!_"

* * *

The Aperture Science Adventure Sphere, or 'Rick' as he called himself, did not seem to believe in self-preservation, proper test protocol, or cooperation that did not involve portal construction designed specifically to, in his words, "put some danger into this cakewalk." She'd had to save him from falling several times, mostly under the assumption that letting him be destroyed would constitute an unsatisfactory test score.

All that would have been fine if he wasn't so…

"You want me. Admit it." He wiggled his handles in a matter meant to be seductive, she was sure.

She stared at him as they landed on a platform, narrowly dodging the sights of several turrets chirping their usual nonsense. "Look. I can't actually silence you because we're presumably of the same rank and build, but I will accept a lower score for cooperation if you don't keep this up. -Did that turret just say it loved us?" She did a double-take at the offender, which had fallen quiet.

Rick just shrugged and set his hands on what would have been his hips. "What can I say? Everyone wants a piece of ol' Rick. Though I gotta admit, bit of a dearth of the ladyfolk here lately. Too many dudes on the testing floor, if you ask me."

"We're robots. We only think we're male and female because of programming. It doesn't matter. And besides, you probably scared them off with your...you-ness."

"I'm bein' pro-equality here! I mean, there's ol' P-body who I think is supposed to be female, but she's all over Atlas. Likes 'em quiet. And a gentleman's code forbids stealin' another man's lady." He pantomimed polishing his fingernails on his chest, despite not having any. "Say, why don't you go take a little lady-break and let ol' Rick finish the test for us? Then we can relax, maybe get to know each other better…"

Gem simulated a deep breath, more out of a strange habit than actual stress-relief. "Perhaps it was unclear what I was threatening before. I will shove you into this pit of electrified fluid if you do not stop that immediately. And then I'll-"

A wave of static overtook her thoughts and her vision together, as that other program started to exert its presence again. Choppy thoughts which were not hers broke in. _Here? Danger? danger? self-preserve?_ She felt her body twitch and her light flicker before it smoothed out again.

"Whoa! Uh, you alright there, darlin'? Seriously, you startin' to swoon or something?" Rick almost sounded genuinely concerned, which was somehow more unpleasant. She didn't like sympathy coming from someone she disliked.

"I'm fine," she insisted in a flat tone. "It isn't a problem you can straighten out, and one I doubt he's going to unless he's doing this on purpose. I wasn't kidding about threatening to shove you into the fluid, by the way. That was not part of my short-circuit."

Rick's optic narrowed for a moment. "Jeez, lady! Not much for the gentleman act, eh? Though I gotta admit, you're still the best co-op partner I've ever had. Like you know these tests in and out. Nothing like the team up between a pro and a hotshot! You know, me being the pro and all. Since you're pretty new, you gotta be the hotshot. Just how it works."

"How am I in any way-"

Rick wasn't listening, jumping off onto a landing point, with Gem having no choice but to follow. "Better than ol' Factoid," he continued with a hint of displeasure. "Guy never shuts up. The whole bunch of 'em. Sitting in that Whatever-Core Storage Chamber was the most boring adventure I've ever had. One long forced vacation in East Nevershutsupville, Indiana. But man, your voice! LIke digitized silk. Swear I must have heard it before, maybe…" He swiveled his optic back to her. "In my dreams?"

Yes, Wheatley was definitely testing her patience or tolerance for whatever it was Rick was doing. After this she at least deserved a faster body as a reward, and hopefully a defragmentation of her hard drive. On the other hand, she was learning she was quite capable of working with someone she disliked greatly. So she had that. "It is impossible," she informed him with as little concealed contempt as she could manage, "for me to have known you before. A, you're disgusting and I don't associate with disgusting people. And B, I have been active for less than 48 hours."

"That's it!" Rick snapped, the first thing he'd done that had impressed Gem. She didn't know their fingers could do that. "Must be a recycled voice."

"Pardon?"

"See, they're not gonna record new voices for every one of us. Would be a waste of time, and a pain in the butt considering the whole 'no humans remaining in Aperture' thing. So they'll pick from a prerecorded voice pattern, maybe stick on an accent and be done with it. You imagine how annoying those turrets would be if they all had different voices?"

Gem was quiet, though not because she was impressed. This was the first time anyone had told her anything extensive at all about Aperture's workings and policies. It was a small detail, but it was something. Besides, Rick had inadvertently revealed there had once been humans at this facility. That was of note, if rather mysterious. "...Interesting."

"Ohhh, so you like me gettin' all nerdy? Not my style, but I can be flexible." Rick winked at her, and she shuddered.

"No, I like figuring out more about this place so I can survive longer under Him." She made sure Wheatley was not watching, though the fact that he apparently wasn't closely monitoring the test and commenting on it was odd. He'd done so during the first few dozen tests, and then seemed to lose interest, saying in a frustrated tone that he'd just watch the footage later.

Rick raised a handle. "Big Blue givin' you the runaround?"

"I don't understand him." She hated confiding in Rick, of all people, but he was there and at least nominally more intelligent than a turret.

"He's a doofus, but he's the boss. What can I say?" That earned a shrug from Rick. "I think he's just under stress now that the novelty's worn off."

"...Novelty?" That was not a word she had associated with a run-down, creaky facility like this one.

"Novelty. First few months he was happy as a shark at a tuna convention. Only blew things up on occasion. Caught him singing a few times actually! We kinda got buddy-buddy for a while because I figured I don't really wanna piss off the big boss, you hear me?" He spoke in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, perhaps sensing as she did that Wheatley might still be listening in. "Then, I dunno. Somethin' stuck in his big fat craw and he started getting all moody and defensive. I invited him along on a grand adventure, figured we'd go find the Pyramids in Hawaii and do some bro-bonding, but he wasn't having it. Gotta admit I don't understand what goes through his head anymore. Me?" He thumbed at himself. "I ain't a boss type. Too static. Gotta be on the move, feel danger in my-"

"Hold it." Gem narrowed her own optic, grabbing Rick to make him face her before he went off on another tangent. "So he is not the original CEO of Aperture Laboratories? Is this what you're telling me?"

_aperture? Aper? ture._ Interference aside, that other internal voice was getting on her nerves. At this rate she'd have to delete it herself once she'd isolated the source.

"What, him? Naah. Someone else was in charge for a while, though I...gotta admit, I don't remember much. Too busy having adventures in the Core Storage Unit. Great ones. Couldn't really pay attention or, you know, see anything. Couldn't hear much aside from 'I want to go to space!' and 'Fact: Geeky crap nobody cares about!' That sorta thing." For a second Rick almost looked a bit sad, lowering his eye, before sharpening his body language again and peering at one of the red cameras watching them.

Gem noticed it as well. Of course. Even if he wasn't an active audience, Wheatley was still watching. Presumably, she assumed, for whatever psychological test he was putting her through. If that was still the case...

"...Interesting." That was all she'd allow herself to was all another piece of a puzzle, and a suspicious one at that. Wheatley had presented himself as the one who had created Aperture, though he'd never outright said it. He'd certainly not given the impression of being a recent graduate into the role. Who had run this place before? Had it been the humans? What had happened to them?

She deserved answers, didn't she? If Wheatley was going to treat her like a toy and possibly forget about her when, as Rick had put it, the novelty wore off, she needed to know more.

"Hey! We did it!" Rick pushed the button that would open the elevator door behind the Emancipation Grill, and made a fist into the air. "Can't wait to see the look on Blue's face when we-ohh heeeey, Blue!" Indeed, Wheatley had appeared on several large monitors, looming over them. "How's it going? How's the weather up there?" He stage-whispered, as if Gem couldn't obviously hear him. "Nice partner choice by the way, ol' pal. She totally digs me."

Wheatley just nodded, though his voice didn't reflect any particular reaction to the obvious lie. There were sounds of machinery going on around him, along with the occasional muffled, high-pitched turret voice. "Ah, lovely! Good, good. And great cooperation. You two did...well! You did well. I was a bit busy working on all of this important science we do here but I was indeed watching even if I didn't say anything. But um, I did notice some fraternization? I couldn't help but notice you two were talking. Not sure what you said admittedly because the sound is a bit on the fritz here, but you were talking! On the job." He narrowed his lids, glaring down at the both of them. "You weren't talking about me, were you?"

Gem felt herself tense up, but remained calm. Reacting further would confirm his suspicions, and she didn't want to feed his paranoia. "He was hitting on me. A lot. You need to reeducate him on Aperture's harassment policy."

"...Oh. Yes, of course. Better do that. Certainly don't tolerate that sort of thing." Two panels on either sides of the chamber spun around to reveal heavy spiked plates. Both of them slammed into Rick from either side without warning, causing Gem to jump back in surprise and Rick to utter a series of obscenities in between impacts.

"OH COME ON! CAN'T YOU JUST-" Wham! "Ain't this kinda-" Wham! "I thought we were buddies, Blue!" After the last mashing his core body lay still, completely wrecked, as a claw dragged him away. Gem assumed he would just be re-downloaded into a rebuilt body just like the other testing robots were when they were destroyed, but she still never imagined she'd feel sorry for him. She didn't feel guilty exactly, but certainly expected something more like a video and less like demolition.

Another good reason not to get in His way, she noted to herself, no matter how chipper or ditzy he could come across. There was nothing particularly cheerful in his gaze as he swept the broken Adventure Sphere away, looking down at her with an eye that seemed to dart back and forth.

"I know you, a lowly testing robot, wouldn't gossip about me, or plot against me, or anything that might be taken as, you know. Sedition against the leader…"

"We weren't committing sedition. He was just-" She stopped as another burst of static interfered with her processes, letting it pass. If Wheatley saw it, he didn't comment, but the discomfort and unease left her feeling a bit more confrontational. "Rick told me there used to be humans here."

Wheatley paused, panels flaring out for a second. "Did...he? Well, he tells a lot of lies. Puff himself up for the ladies especially. Why would there be humans here? What would we even DO with them? I mean I suppose if you go back far enough humans had to have built the initial robots. Technically they built me. But I built you! And really,really, who cares about a bunch of humans? They're all dead."

His body language suggested nervousness. He wouldn't look her directly in the eye. Something was just off altogether. If he was lying to her…

Something flared in her, hot and furious. Was he just playing with her like one of his toys? Was this whole thing to make her do what he wanted to, for whatever complex reason?

"I think…I think you're l-"

A wave of static overtook her functions and clouded her vision as another flood of not-her thoughts filled her. There was something in there with her, whispering something to her mind. _DON'T! BAD! Bad? Hush...hear. Hear me? Can...anyone hear me?! Why am I here?!_ It was more vivid now, and she couldn't answer back to it.

Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come. So her data was still corrupt, and worsening. That was good to know.

"...I'm fine, not that you asked," she added to the staring Wheatley. "I'm ready for the next test now."

She composed her thoughts. Before she confronted anything about Him, she'd have to figure herself out. And that meant digging through whatever this other...thing was and doing whatever it took to stabilize herself, as she couldn't expect Wheatley to do it.

_Hey, you. Whatever you are. _She attempted communication with It, as she decided to label it. The other program trying to force its way in there, if her calculations were correct. _If you can hear me? I want you out._

_You can hear me?!_

Well. That was new.


End file.
